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Book Description

Are you thinking about buying a new or used car, but you're worried about being ripped off? If you're like most people, you don't want to haggle with salesmen, yet you still want the best deal, and this book will show you how.

Hi, I'm Gregg Fidan, founder of RealCarTips.com, a site that teaches car shoppers how to get the best deals and avoid scams. Years ago, I found myself extremely frustrated after buying my first car. I had been ripped-off by a sleazy salesman and hated the fact that I had to haggle with him in the first place. I wondered why we couldn't buy cars the same way we buy any other product. Why should we have to worry about being lied to and cheated? Buying a car should be fun, but instead it's a painful process!

I felt there was way too much dishonesty from dealers, and frankly, there's confusing information and bad advice out there for consumers. I just knew there had to be a way for someone like me, who doesn't like to negotiate, to get a great deal without having to go through a ton of hassle. I was determined to come up with a simple method that not only I could use, but one that I could teach others so they don't have to go through the same frustrations I experienced. So, I took it upon myself to research and study exactly how car dealers and manufacturers work.

I researched absolutely everything I could get my hands on. I've read EVERY single car buying book on the market (43 at last count), written by various insiders, former salesmen, car dealers, and consumer advocates - all with slightly different views regarding the best way to buy a car (with some even contradicting each other). I've pored through hundreds of industry journals, subscribed to dozens of car magazines, attended dealer conferences, studied sales training manuals, and even did a stint as a professional car price negotiator. I spent literally thousands of hours doing my homework, and I've been determined to spare no time and no expense to discover every practical idea for making car buying easier, more transparent, and less expensive for the average consumer.

I've taken everything I learned and condensed it into this book. In it you'll learn:

* The 3 biggest mistakes car buyers make * The simple and counter-intuitive "secret" to car price negotiation * How leasing can actually save you money * The one simple mistake that costs most car buyers thousands * Why you should never rely on the dealer to arrange your car loan * How to save thousands on car insurance * Why pricing guides are usually wrong * List of bogus fees and products almost every dealer tries to sell * And much more...

Are you thinking about buying a new or used car, but you're worried about being ripped off? If you're like most people, you don't want to haggle with salesmen, yet you still want the best deal, and this book will show you how.

Hi, I'm Gregg Fidan, founder of RealCarTips.com, a site that teaches car shoppers how to get the best deals and avoid scams. Years ago, I found myself extremely frustrated after buying my first car. I had been ripped-off by a sleazy salesman and hated the fact that I had to haggle with him in the first place. I wondered why we couldn't buy cars the same way we buy any other product. Why should we have to worry about being lied to and cheated? Buying a car should be fun, but instead it's a painful process!

I felt there was way too much dishonesty from dealers, and frankly, there's confusing information and bad advice out there for consumers. I just knew there had to be a way for someone like me, who doesn't like to negotiate, to get a great deal without having to go through a ton of hassle. I was determined to come up with a simple method that not only I could use, but one that I could teach others so they don't have to go through the same frustrations I experienced. So, I took it upon myself to research and study exactly how car dealers and manufacturers work.

I researched absolutely everything I could get my hands on. I've read EVERY single car buying book on the market (43 at last count), written by various insiders, former salesmen, car dealers, and consumer advocates - all with slightly different views regarding the best way to buy a car (with some even contradicting each other). I've pored through hundreds of industry journals, subscribed to dozens of car magazines, attended dealer conferences, studied sales training manuals, and even did a stint as a professional car price negotiator. I spent literally thousands of hours doing my homework, and I've been determined to spare no time and no expense to discover every practical idea for making car buying easier, more transparent, and less expensive for the average consumer.

I've taken everything I learned and condensed it into this book. In it you'll learn:

* The 3 biggest mistakes car buyers make * The simple and counter-intuitive "secret" to car price negotiation * How leasing can actually save you money * The one simple mistake that costs most car buyers thousands * Why you should never rely on the dealer to arrange your car loan * How to save thousands on car insurance * Why pricing guides are usually wrong * List of bogus fees and products almost every dealer tries to sell * And much more...

Well, sometimes you do come across a book that actually IS informative. I've spent literally hours and hours digging through mountains of information here. Good thing it's well organized. Let's see.

The book covers shopping for car itself, new or used, down to the nitty-gritty like fees and paperwork; getting the best car loans and insurances; basically, pretty much anything and everything we have to do when shopping for a car or leasing one.

In this economy, the section on car loans, especially the chapters dealing with bad credit and how to recognize a credit scam, should be a must read for everyone. All the little telltales of how you are about to be a victim of a scam are here. Before you go and talk to the dealer, just write them down and if any of those terms listed pop up, you'll know that you are about to be had.

There's a section on selling your car or trading it in that I found pretty illuminating. Apparently, there's a right way to do that and a way we usually do that. Do it right and you'll end up at least a few hundred dollars richer. That's food for thought right there.

The section that describes how to shop for car leases is not really for me since I prefer to own. However, I looked through it and it seems comprehensive enough.The bit on "Twin Vehicles" caught my attention as well. I have a Mazda and if I did my research at the time I bought it I could have gotten the same exact model from Ford that was actually cheaper at the time.

One thing about this book that I found peculiar is that there's a lot of tie-in with the author's website. I am a little bit old-fashioned so I like my info to be all there in one place. On a plus side, there's enough material on the website to write another book just like this one easily. And this one is large as is. So, if that doesn't bother you, then you can get a whole lot of bonus information on the site. Tips, advices, checklists, etc. I suppose it's easier to update a site with current info than republish a book every few weeks.

My personal quirks aside, I think this book was a good investment for me.Read more ›

I downloaded this to my Kindle and read parts of it right away and skimmed much of the rest. It's a VERY informative book. It covers everything you can think of, including internet negotiations and researching and shopping. Another reviewer's review mentioned it's only for new cars, but there is an entire section about used cars, and it seemed fairly thorough to me, including things to consider when deciding whether used is better for you than new. I didn't read it thoroughly, but offhand it looked as if it didn't go into a lot of detail about the actual negotiation process as with new cars, though. But that may be because many of the new car procedures apply to used cars. Still, I saw some useful information about that process. As for new cars, there is so much information that it boggles the mind. The one criticism I have others might not consider a negative, which is that it goes into so much detail about jumping through hoops to save $300 that I found that somewhat nonsensical. Spending hours to save a few hundred dollars doesn't seem like something I want to do. Time is money, and who has that kind of time? But some may want to do that. But for the most part, he gives practical advice and specific procedures on buying, which should result in savings of thousands off msrp, I should think. I checked out his website, also, and that is ALSO informative, with handy links. All of this in this book for less than $5. What a deal. I highly recommend it. I learned I did everything wrong the last time I bought a car. I won't be making those mistakes next time!

The book was very repetitive. It seems it was written as a series of articles crudely joined into a book. In fact in the chapters/articles they refer to themselves as articles. The author repeated elementary main points many times. The book all in all could have been one third of its volume and still had the same amount of intelligible content.There were some ideas that will help me buy a used car. Most of the book was fluff.This book, although sold for Kindle, had many charts and links that were not formatted correctly to be viewed on Kindle. Some links were non-existent although they were referenced in the text.

This e-book is a convenient collection of the information the author makes available for free on his website. I found his tips so useful in my own car-buying process that I wanted to buy the e-book to support his efforts. The e-book itself is not particularly well formatted from an aesthetic point of view, but it's plenty legible and I'm glad to have everything collected in one place and it's much easier than clicking around the website if you really want to dig into the material. Worth the money.

A bit outdated, which often happens with people with many years of experience, they tend to teach what was important in 1985.For instance, a lot of text on lemons, even though there are no more lemons. Lemons are defined as cars with built-in defects resulting from tolerance mismatches and plain bad parts, back in the day when an acceptable quality level was one defect per 100 parts. Today, not even one in 10,000 is acceptable, and there is optical/robotic inspection for 100% failsafe. The 'lemon' boogeyman is used by dealerships to make people hesitate to shop only online and by phone, and by auto repair shops to get away with scamming you by weakening something when you bring it in so something else goes awry a week later. A person knowledgeable about cars would know this.

Knowing how a dealership pays its electric bill is neither here nor there; getting a competitive low price means paying less than you can buy the same car for elsewhere, period. The focus should not be on what this dealership gets, it should be on matching or beating the lowest price for 100 miles around, and making sure the negotiated price isn't jacked up with add-on costs.

There are a lot of lists that take up space, such as a list of possible car options, lists of car auction sites, lists of car names. All of this has to be scrolled past. The initial bluster about saving $500,000 and then saving $5,000 per purchase and then a paragraph later it's only $2,500 and only on new cars. He flips between talking about new and used.

The beginning financial numbers really bother me. It seems that someone who bought 20 cars over 25 years would get good at it-no book could take credit for that learning curve. Making wild extrapolations based on 9%+ per year and high loan interest rates shows his info is not based on either the stock market or car loan rates in the past 5 years. Starting the book with out-of-touch imaginary numbers all skewed in his direction . . . say, sounds just like car salesman thinking. Those are not honest numbers, those are self-serving and deceptive numbers.Read more ›